Besides being an excellent horror/fantasy novel by Tim Powers (who also wrote the excellent On Stranger Tides) the title became a true life thing for me.

Few Things Will Remind You You Are Almost Fifty And Twelve Feet Up A Tree Quite Like...

So the darn squirrels started chewing down my bird feeders last December when the temps dropped below 45F at night. Prior to that they had been polite and only took the spillage and gaffled the occassional peanut I leave out for the scrub jays. The jays are usually prompt enough the squirrels don't get any.

The bird feeders only went up February before last. I had protested for years because I didn't want the seed weeding the lawn but relented and man was I ever wrong headed about that. I have fallen in love with the different tribes of small birds.

We mainly get house finchs (the males have beautiful red heads) as the main small bird and only a few sparrow species. Then the Brewer's black birds and the doves show up, along with some starlings. I'm jealous of my friend Ol' Weird Bob because his house is just down the street and around the corner and he gets different types of gold finchs. Though he likes my house finchs.

As the squirrels chewed down the feeders I would replace the cordage with coat hanger wire. Can't see it, and it works just fine. Works better in some cases as I can make a stiff hook in one end and just hook it over branchs without having to tie anything. I just lift the the feeders off the branch to take them down to clean them.

As there was just one feeder left that was tied up with parachute cord I took it down last weekend and rigged it with a coat hanger so I could prevent it from getting damaged by a fall. (I have six feeders in one tree) Now to hang it in just the right spot I had to climb the tree to reach the proper branch. I had gotten it down just by pulling hard.

With my sister the nurse chiding me the whole time, telling me what a bad idea this was, I climbed up the tree to where I had to lean away from the center trunk to place the feeder. And that's when I heard that noise. If you have raised chickens or parrots you would know the sound. It was the sound of a good sized bird jumping from one perch to another perch. In this case from one farther away to one less far away.

And when I slowly turned my head I even knew what I was going to see.

Technically It Is A Bird Feeder..

So a month and a half ago I notice what I think is the cats getting unusually successful around the bird feeders. Now I do everything in my power to discourage the cats hunting birds in the yard. Rodents are carte blanche, but birds are off limits. I use a variation of the "spray bottle" method of disciplining errant cats stalking birds in the yard. If you have the right angle on them, why, you can get a cat to jump four or five feet straight up in the air.

Anyway, I started noticing feathers on the ground under the feeders in quantity. And from different birds as I usually clean up feathers from cat kills as I find them disturbing to the harmony of my (parent's) garden. So when it gets to the point where I'm thinking lather, rinse, repeat I have to wonder what's going on. I got the answer that afternoon.

Now one of the funny things about bird watching in my area is that doves have the same wing shape as a lot of small falcons so I trained myself over the years not to react to the "false alarm" when I see them out of the corner of my eye. This has since become a handicap. It seems that for the second season of BigDon's Bird Feeder a female Cooper's hawk has taken to roosting in my bird feeder tree. (Though not nesting yet, thank goodness)

I first learned the truth of the cat's innocence when that afternoon she took a female house finch out of the air less ten feet from my head. Took it to the tree and peeled it so all the feathers fell in the position I've been seeing them in. My parents have a screened-in patio with black screens next to the feeders that provide an excellent blind for bird watching.

Now imagine how "unthinking" I felt. I'm looking at this Cooper's hawk from about two feet away. One arm around the tree trunk and the other holding a feeder. My sweet face just hanging out there. Now I truely don't think she was hostile so much as curious. She didn't open her mouth and she didn't give an audible threat. She just dipped her head to bring it down level with mine. I actually got to look her right square in the eye. She looked fierce, but I think it was just the shape of her face and not a projection of hostility.

Mind you I wasn't all calm and David Attenbourough here. Why, the first thought to spring to mind was a bad word. [Sesame Street voice over] Today's bad word brought to you by the number 2, AND the letter "S" [End Sesame Street voice over] I think it took a lot of courage on my part to turn my head and finish the task at hand. The whole time wondering if my ear lobes looked like naked baby mice to Miss Cooper there.

But the only bad moment came when she jumped to another perch to get a better view of what I was doing. I knew corvids were that intelligent but I didn't expect that behavior in raptors. That one moment when my back was to her and she left her perch but before she landed on the next one was a very long one for me. My brain gave my adrenal glands a big ol' squeeze just then, I tell you true.

But I did get down alright and unassailed. Heck, I was just putting up more bait for her. In the last three weeks I have seen more small birds taken by that hawk that all my 48 years previously put together, by a large margin. Yesterday I saw her take a starling, which is a little bigger than what she usually takes. She employed a different technique than for smaller birds.

What the nature shows never give you is the sound. You can hear it quite distinctly when a raptor nails a bird in the air at speed. Sounds like what you would imagine playing baseball with baby chicks would sound like. (Back in the wooden bat days)

And starlings must be either slower than other birds running for their lives or she caught this one napping. From the ground it looked like all she did was fly up beside the starling, (on it's right) do a snap roll to bring her feet into play and then flew away with her dinner. Didn't even look violent.

On the other hand I saw her last Thursday chasing a gray streak that was either a mocking bird (great northern) or a towhee. Not only was she not discouraged when the prey item flew through the canopy of the bird feeder tree, she actually went crashing in after it without slowing a bit, just tucked her wings, like in the stoop position. Never would have seen it had I not already been looking in the right direction.

BD

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

Wow that must be a sight.
Question:
Do you feel guilty for being an accomplice?
You are indeed setting up the poor birds with your feeder and all, THIS is meant as a tongue in cheek. No offense intended.

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This whole internet thing is probably not a passing fad.-Ronald Brak
While speech might be free, consequences cost.-Doodler

She was prolly thinking 'About time monkey-boy. I was getting tired of all the squirrel in my buffet.'